The Slipped Disc daily comfort zone (225): Not an island

The Slipped Disc daily comfort zone (225): Not an island

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norman lebrecht

November 04, 2020

At the onset of a second lockdown –

Comments

  • Alexander says:

    to my ears a reggae version is the most comfortable taking into consideration the word “island” 😉 Joan Baez is a pioneer though … Tabernacle choir has its own spiritual limits because of the word “mormon”, a real creativity cannot be restricted by anything including a religious paradigm …
    PS disclaimer – just my opinion, of course 😉

  • Elizabeth Owen says:

    The Victoria Chorale was beautiful thanks.

  • Garech de Brun says:

    No man is an island entire of itself,
    Every man is a piece of the continent,
    A part of the main.
    If a clod be washed away by the sea,
    Europe is the less,
    As well as if a promontory were,
    As well as any manor of thy friend’s,
    Or of thine own were.
    Any man’s death diminishes me,
    Because I am involved in mankind.
    And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
    It tolls for thee.

    John Donne
    Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions and Several Steps in my Sickness
    Meditation XVII, 1624

    • Marfisa says:

      Just a tiny, very belated, quibble – it is prose, not free verse. And very fine prose, from the meditation in the seventeenth of Donne’s ‘Devotions upon emergent Occasions’, reflections on his own near-fatal sickness, published in 1624. Worth reading in full, not just this one famous extract. Imagine if Beethoven’s Ninth was known only for the Ode to Joy! The text can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg.

  • Edgar Self says:

    Doc Martin and his fellowIirish harpist Garecn de Brun both have shown that Donne’s magnificent lines cannot be quoted too often, as Hemingway surely would agree. I hope they are known to our new Irish-American president-elect.

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